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What our customer's say!

"The Right Stuff", Pagan Christianity is one of the most provocative and courageous books written about the church in recent years. I thoroughly enjoyed reading it and cannot wait to see Frank Viola's next book, Reimaging the Church. As a pastor who ministers like a missionary in the inner-city with at-risk youth, bikers, the homeless, ex-felons, AIDS patients, and other people not always warmly welcomed in the mainstream, I have found I have to be "non-traditional" in my approach to church. What I learned as I read this book is that many of the methods and practices we do out of necessity in our church and ministries actually reflect with accuracy the practices of the first century and early church. And they really work -- at least, for us!

For sure, this book has the potential to make many pastors uncomfortable because it challenges some longstanding and widely accepted church traditions. But from beginning to end, the information is well-documented and presented with a true spirit of love. I put this book on the "must read" list for many of the younger ministers that work beside us. Whether you like the conclusions or not, Pagan Christianity is worth reading because it requires reflection on what the church is doing, how we "do church," and what your own personal approach to ministry is all about. And did we say, Pagan Christianity does all this and still brings honor and glory to our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ!

"Excellent Exposure of Apostasy in Your Church", I am the publisher of James Russell Publishing.com and the author of "The Lost Gospel of John". I do not publish this book, but the book "Pagan Christianity" is an excellent "in-your-face" exposure of the great apostasy taking place in 99.999 protestant churches. No beating around the bush. The authors are directly to the point and back up all their claims with solid historical and biblical evidence. It is powerfully written, brutally truthful and is terribly relevant today in these last days. The book is so truthful it is scary to read, but Jesus promised "the truth will set you free" and for this reason I highly and strongly recommend every churchgoer read this book to be set free from those trusted hirelings who are obviously unbiblically oppressing and controlling them without them even realizing it. This book is a powerful collection of easy to read wisdom. Any Christian who refuses to read this book will one day wish they had!

""WORDS IN RED"", TO ALL NEGATIVE REVIEWS:

IN SHORT, I BELIEVE THE REAL PROOFTEXTING IS FOUND IN INSTITUTIONALISM - READ THE WORDS IN RED - JESUS THE MESSIAH RESTORED INDIVIDUAL FREEDOM AND OPPOSED ALL FORMS OF INSTITUTIONALISM; OTHERWISE HE WOULD'VE SET UP HIS KINGDOM ON EARTH. INSTITUTIONALISM NAILED HIM TO THE CROSS!

THE GREATEST COMMANDMENT...

"History, not Criticism", This book is essentially an abbreviated history of where all of the common practices (outside of Christmas and Easter) of the Protestant church came from. I felt that the author made every effort to present the facts as cleanly as possible.

That said, you probably noticed that many reviewers are very critical of the author's "opinions", but I got the impression that he was very up front about what was opinion and what was fact, and most of the disturbing parts of this book are undeniable facts. This is a very important book for Christians to read.

P.S. - If you liked Shane Claiborne's "Irresistable Revolution", you will like this book. Together with "Reimagining Church", it's a more paced, scholarly verison of the same basic concepts.

"Answers for questions not asked much", Elke zichzelf respecterende kerk of gemeente beweert zich te baseren op Gods Woord, de Bijbel. Leer en praktijk worden met een beroep op de Heilige Schrift onderbouwd, verklaard en verdedigd. Kerkverlating omdat de gewoontes niet (meer) aanspreken, het haast slaafs volgen van tradities of het versterken van de eigen identiteit ten koste van omliggende gelovigen en denominaties zijn zo wat effecten. Zelf zoek ik al jarenlang naar de momenten en oorzaken in de kerkgeschiedenis die het prille begin van het christendom in het bijbelboek Handelingen hebben gemaakt tot de instellingen die we nu kerk en gemeente noemen, kortom het 'christelijke wereldje' uitleggen. Viola & Barna hebben met Pagan Christianity? de ongestelde vragen gesteld en zijn op zoek gegaan naar antwoorden. Niet om God en geloof af te vallen, integendeel, juist om te zoeken naar de bijbelse wijze van samenkomen van christelijke gelovigen. In hun analyse van de kerkgeschiedenis heeft het schrijversduo zich vooral gericht op de Protestante Kerk als instituut. Uiteraard zijn de Rooms-Katholieke Kerk in de eerste 15 eeuwen nodig voor het verhaal. En, waar menig evangelische gemeente of charismatische gemeenschap, Pinkstergemeente of andere denominatie zich nogal eens afzet tegen de 'gevestigde kerken', zijn ook deze instellingen niet schoon van menselijke instellingen en regels.

Genadeloos wordt afgerekend met de vele heidense invloeden die allerlei 'christelijke' instituties hebben gevormd tot wat ze nu zijn: kerkgebouw, verdeling tussen leek & kader, liturgie, preek, de dominee/voorganger, zondagse kleding, muziek in de samenkomst, tienden, betaalde kerkelijk werkers, doop en eucharistie, opleidingen theologie en bijbelscholen en de manier waarop de Bijbel wordt gelezen, uitgelegd en benaderd. Hoewel met 1100 voetnoten en een enorme schat aan achtergrondinformatie, willen de auteurs niet zozeer kennis overbrengen, informeren, maar harten aanraken. Nadrukkelijk staan ze aan het eind stil bij de 'En toen?' vraag. Een dergelijke reeks gewetensvragen aan de lezer vraagt om een reactie. Bewustwording wat door mensen ingesteld of ingebracht is, en wat werkelijk terug te voeren op de Bijbel, is een eerste begin. Het vervolg moet zitten in de manier waarop je met medegelovigen wilt, mag c.q. zou moeten samenkomen om God te aanbidden, geestelijk te groeien, elkaar te dienen en het evangelie bekend te maken in je omgeving.

Frank Viola zelf heeft goede ervaringen opgedaan met zogenaamde organic churches, gemeentes die wel lijken op het beeld, dat het Nieuwe Testament oproept van een christelijke gemeenschap. De profetie in Ezechiël 37 over het dal met dorre beenderen in gedachten hebbend, is het zaak een gemeente te laten geboren worden, niet zelf te maken. Immers, je zou heel makkelijk conclusies kunnen trekken uit het boek en vooral voor jezelf kunnen beginnen. Je huisgroep of wijkkring is zó tot nieuwe kerk gebombardeerd met jijzelf als hoofd. Dat is begrijpelijk, maar het is niet in lijn met de Bijbel.

Het boek zelf heeft al bij elk hoofdstuk een Q&A sectie, meer kun je vinden op www.paganchristianity.org. Ook behulpzaam is het vorige boek van Viola, The Untold Story of the New Testament Church: An Extraordinary Guide to Understanding the New Testament, een chronologische herschikking van de verhalen uit de nieuwtestamentische boeken en brieven om je te helpen het grotere geheel te zien. Pagan Christianity is wat Viola en Barna betreft slechts één deel van de conversatie. Het vervolg uit september 2008 heet Reimagining Church: Pursuing the Dream of Organic Christianity. Een reconstructie van Gods oorspronkelijke bedoeling met de gemeente, het lichaam van Christus, een organisch, levend, ademhalend organisme. Een gemeente vrij van conventies, gevormd door een geestelijke intimiteit en niet opgesloten tussen 4 muren.

Read this reviews before You buy...

"A Blessed Read!!!", This book presents some information that is more than valuable for His true church. I Highly recommend reading this book and the others by Frank Viola. It will help you see the true grace of God, as He has allowed all of this pagan influence to train His true church. It is more than amazing what we wretched souls do and have done against our God, His precious Son, and His Holy Spirit. Hope it doesn't hurt your denominational feelings but, instead draws you to Christ. Despite all of the flack against this book, Read It For Yourself, with an open heart and mind, see what Jesus really has to say! Please do not be mislead with Tradition!

"An Attack On Every Aspect of the Institutional Church", Pagan Christianity by Frank Viola and George Barna (Barna Books, 2008) is sure to ruffle some feathers. In the authors' attempt to "explore the roots of our church practices," they aim their guns at nearly every aspect of the institutional church.

Books that critique the current worship practices of the Church come and go. But rarely does one come across a book that so vehemently opposes everything about the institutional Church. Viola and Barna are convinced that the housechurch/organic church movement is the way of the future because it is the only authentic reproduction of the past.

Viola and Barna believe that for almost 2000 years, the Church has been seriously misguided. Layers of tradition have stifled the true Christian experience. In order to recover the early church of the apostles, we must see the church as an "organic entity."

An organic church is simply a church that is born out of spiritual life instead of constructed by human institutions and held together by religious programs. Organic churches are characterized by Spirit-led, open-participatory meetings and nonhierarchical leadership. This is in stark contrast to a clergy-led institution-driven church.

Pagan Christianity takes the readers through the history of many of our church practices. The authors argue the following:

The church should not contain any hierarchy at all.

The senior pastor is actually an obstacle to the fully-functioning body of Christ.

The idea of a sermon in a church gathering is pagan (after all, that brings about a clergy/laity distinction).

Church buildings take away from the biblical teaching that the Church is a people.

Any routine in worship is wrong. All liturgy, whether Protestant, Catholic or free church is misguided and stifling to the Holy Spirit.
Dressing up for church is a leftover from paganism and hypocritical for Christians.

No one should lead in singing. To have a worship leader picking songs is an affront to freedom in Christ.

Tithing is completely unbiblical and now serves to prop up the unbiblical institutionalized church and the salaries of unbiblical clergy.

Baptism and the Lord's Supper have been coopted by pagan mysticism.

Christian education doesn't work because everything is mind-focused. Discipleship should be an apprentice-ship, not just filling the head with information.

The Bible needs to be read in context, not as a jigsaw puzzle.

We need to be like Jesus - revolutionaries who are ready to turn aside all tradition.

A few areas of agreement (and I do mean a few):

It's good to question why we do things a certain way in worship. I do not find fault with the authors for posing good questions.

We do need to recover the celebratory aspect of the Lord's Supper, and I think that placing the Supper within the context of a community meal might help.

The Bible does, indeed, need to be read as a narrative, and not merely as a list of selective verses.

We need to be willing to throw out traditions that are unbiblical.

Some areas of disagreement:

1. First off, I disagree with the underlying premise of the entire book - a premise that says the early church was untainted and uncorrupted by human tradition. I often ask this question to those who want to get back to the early church: Which early church do you want to be like?

Corinth? (Do you really want incestuous church members and no-rules-at-all worship gatherings?)

Galatia? (Is it good to model a church that has so quickly abandoned the gospel?)

Thessalonica? (Do you want to be the church that has lost the eschatological hope of the new heavens and new earth? A church drowning in grief?)

Sure, we can learn from the earliest churches. But I disagree that there is some pristine, uncorrupted, untainted early church that we must aspire to be.

2. I dislike the way Viola and Barna put forward their argument. They leave no room for discussion on the issue. If you disagree with them, you must love the traditions of man more than God. It becomes impossible to enter into honest dialogue because of the way they have set up the predicament.

3. Pagan Christianity is a historical book that hates history. That might sound like an oxymoron; after all, the book is filled with historical dates and references. But the authors are convinced that all Christianity from the second-century on has been wrong, unbiblical, and harmful to the gospel. In other words, church history is the story of a church that does not at all resemble what Jesus intended.

Let me give a quick example. When discussing the liturgy, the authors seek to show how the order of worship of medieval Catholicism is still visible in Protestant churches. There should be no order of worship, no routine, no liturgy whatsoever. The authors compare and contrast the liturgies of varying denominations to show how they are all unbiblical. But nowhere do the authors entertain the notion that perhaps the similarities in liturgy point to the value in structuring our worship a certain way. Have the greatest thinkers of the past 2000 years been blinded by tradition? Or have the great Christian thinkers seen value in the way Christian worship has developed?

4. Pagan Christianity will drive more evangelicals to the Roman Catholic Church. Just watching an author like George Barna go from one fad to another in the past twenty years is enough to exhaust anyone who tires of the evangelical merry-go-round. Even though Pagan Christianity condemns Roman Catholic tradition, its equating of Roman Catholicism with Protestantism in areas of church practice will undermine this book's argument. Many disenchanted evangelicals will try out the "organic" churches that Barna recommends, only to discover the same fallenness in this expression of the "church" that they saw in the institutional church they left. Burned, confused, and disappointed, many will turn to Rome for the stability they long for.

5. Pagan Christianity will give ammunition to those who already dislike the churches they have encountered. I do not believe the book will launch a new organic-church movement. I believe the book will give justification to those who have already removed themselves from their local bodies of Christ. Pagan Christianity, if taken seriously by many Christians, will not lead to a renewal of the church, but to ecclesial amputation - as more and more disenchanted church members abandon their church families in order to seek after the "pure church" of the first century. They will keep chasing the pot at the end of the rainbow, only to find it eludes them because it doesn't exist.

"Baby with the Bath Water", This book gets a lot right so I highly recommend it but with caution. The historical homework is excellent but the application requires caution. The weeknesses seem to be: rigid rejection of most church leadership and the means to selectively support them. There also seems to be a lack of appreciation of the creeds. While one may be uncomfortable with the wooden use of creeds they can provide a useful distillation of the corporate understanding of the Church.
Amen to the premise that the church needs ecclisiological reformation.

"Great book", The book is extremely interesting. There is a huge shift in Christiandom for "something more" and I think Viola and Barna did a great job explaining why so many of us are feeling this way.

The majority of institutionalized churches today absolutely miss the first century concepts of authentic community, familial love and devotion, centrality of Jesus, gathering without ritual, priesthood of the saints, and every-member functioning. The authors give explanations of how this happened and why it shouldn't have happened.

I hightly recommend it for anyone who knows something is missing from their corporate worship and who is longing for something more.

"A Must Read", This is the best book I've ever read. A must read for any of you who are wondering why you do the things you do every Sunday morning in church, and wondering if there isn't more meant for you.